Favela Pt. 07

Reborn was how she felt. As soon as her door was shut Olivia pulled off her bandoleer and then her dress. She spent one final minute staring at Marcella's scandalous black lingerie in the mirror on her closet door before peeling them off mournfully. Folding them into a neat little bundle she deposited them into the same drawer she'd dumped her prosthetic the previous night. Letting out a sigh of resignation she went over to her dresser and searched for a suitable replacement.

Her mood immediately brightened when she pictured Marcella wearing each ragged unflattering pair. "Yes, you'll be wearing these!" She said chortling wickedly, holding up what was perhaps her oldest and least adult looking underwear. They had been white once with thick pink elastic around all the edges, they were only still in one piece because they were made out of some absurdly sturdy and well-made material she couldn't identify. Even so there were a couple of holes in the front and the back.

Olivia snickered as she lined up two of the holes and looked directly through them. "Not exactly the luxury you're accustomed to, mom." She breathed bitterly. Still they were super comfortable, almost like wearing tiny shorts, the crotch had a pretentious sewn-in liner that practically felt like a pillow and somehow they managed to miraculously encompass her entire ass. She pulled them snug and then needlessly tight.

It felt good to be wearing something dry for a change, even if she knew it wouldn't last long. In fact she was already getting wet just thinking about where they would end up. It was too hot for anything but her usual ensemble, she threw everything else on without much thought. Olivia was going to be early for work again but it didn't bother her one bit, now that she was a melter her job was almost pleasant. Handling the hot iron seemed effortless compared to the heavy cumbersome cutters.

Her day went by fairly quickly, she never seemed to run out of energy or get tired, at times she even started feeling a little bored. She entertained herself by thinking about Marcella, gleefully scheming about all the funny and dirty things she could make her mom do. She also enjoyed her new perspective, standing on top of the working gantry, staring down at her former comrades as they scurried about beneath her feet. This gave her a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Occasionally the new girl (her replacement) would work on the boards Olivia was soldering. She was a lot younger and clearly still very weak. They really must have pulled her off the street. Olivia pitied the girl, her own memories of her first traumatic week as a cutter having never completely faded. Her sympathies were only slightly dampened by the girl's unusually large breasts, which made Olivia a little jealous but also excited her as she watched fat droplets of sweat skating down into depths of the girl's ample cleavage.

When the break buzzer sounded Olivia descended into the clipping trench and tracked the girl down. She was sitting on top of a metal crate, panting, clutching her clippers with a death-grip. Her tiny hands oozed from several large blisters, she'd wrapped them poorly with strips of tattered cloth. Olivia snorted at the girl's hapless appearance, but her heart felt a powerful tug and she quickened her pace. "Hey." She said, crouching down so that she could look the urchin in the eyes.

"I'm Olivia, and thanks to you I'm up top now." She thrust her hand into a pocket and pulled out a cricket cake. It was one of the expensive ones from the vending machine in the break room, the girl's eyes came into focus, her mouth started watering so much that she was forced to close it. "The first week is hell, but don't give up." Olivia unwrapped the cake and broke off a generous piece. The girl's hands twitched but Olivia shook her head. "Don't let go, it'll hurt a million times worse."

Reaching out she brought the morsel of food to the girl's ragged lips. Her mouth opened and Olivia slipped it gently inside. The girl chewed for several seconds then swallowed, she smiled thankfully and her eyes even teared up a little. "My name is Maithri." She rasped. Olivia fed her another piece of cake, this time the girl's lips closed around the tips of her fingers, it felt nice so Olivia withdrew them slowly, letting Maithri get all the stray crumbs.

"You're one of the survivors from Bharata aren't you?" She asked, breaking off another small piece. The girl nodded.

"From the north, it was safe when I was born, but the strokes came before the cooling towers were built. Everything got burned, we hijacked a decommissioned oil tanker and ended up here." Olivia already knew about the strokes since they'd had them in South America too, the only difference was that they'd been lucky, the first experimental towers had gone up in Sao Paulo the year before, shielding them from the worst of it. She fed Maithri the fragment of cake, turning her fingers in the girl's mouth so that she could suck them clean.

Maithri was looking better already, less pale, if light brown skin could ever be considered such, Olivia took a minute to study her features closely as the girl chewed ravenously. She had a very classical bone structure, rounded despite her thinness, thick voluminous curly black hair, intensely brown virtually black eyes, thick black brows. There was a prevailing aristocratic darkness to all her features. In all honesty she looked like an Indian princess out a fairy tale hologram.

She was wearing an interesting kind of wrap that appeared to be made out of singed sackcloth. It looped over one shoulder, cut behind her back, reappeared under the opposite arm, crossed tautly over her melon-sized breasts and continued back around her waist. In half a dozen revolutions it managed to ensconce most of her body, terminating in a rather stylish looking tube that strained to remain folded neatly around her incongruously wide hips. Glancing down Olivia noted that Maithri was wearing sandals cut from tire treads, they were laced with braided telephone wire.

Footwear was one of the many ways Olivia judged a person's character and this new girl was scoring high marks. She put the last piece of the cake into Maithri's mouth and sighed as she realized that there wasn't any left in the wrapper. Now that she had all this extra money though it barely mattered, except that break was almost over and there was little time to buy another. "Make sure you drink lots of water." She said sternly, licking the crumbs off her fingers herself. The girl nodded shyly and got unsteadily to her feet.

"I won't forget this. Olivia." She said, her face beaming, her teeth shockingly white. "Before the strokes I lived in a palace, I may be on the street now but I will not be for ever." Olivia smirked skeptically, it was hard to take this blister and bandage spangled waif seriously, but she had heard of stranger things. The strokes had come without warning, no one had been expecting them, paupers and kings had been laid low in equal measure, by the causal ambivalence of mother nature's cleansing fire.

"Just focus on staying alive for now." She replied gently, the work buzzer drowning out the last couple of words. She pivoted sharply and took off running for the stairs, once the assembly line started up again there couldn't be any slack. Thankfully her bountiful surplus energy and familiarity with the meandering trench warren got her back on the line with seconds to spare. The rest of the day slipped by without incident, excepting the few times Maithri ended up under her station; when their eyes met they shared a smile.

The shift buzzer sounded, Olivia holstered her hot iron in the nearby brazier, she just could not get used to this short day business. Even so she was glad to be away from the oppressive heat of her tool. Not to mention she had made some tentative plans in the middle of the day and now she was getting really excited just thinking about her next adventure. Still attached to the relative solitude of the cargo car she hitched a ride to the central annex and from there walked into the heart of the bazaar.

She didn't come here often, since her mom worked in the paramilitary district and could bring home anything she needed (within reason). But there were some things you simply couldn't buy, things like information or technology that wasn't merely shady in the gray market sense, but was illegal because it had been outlawed by state science. Olivia was here today for possibly both. There was also the added complication that her mom was indirectly involved in the quest, so Olivia had to do this by herself.

The problem was she didn't know exactly were to start, the thing she wanted might not even exist, and worst of all she doubted that she could afford to buy it. That left her with only one option, some kind of trade, a proverbial deal with o diabo. Still the cybernetics district was probably a safe bet, maybe if she were really lucky they'd even drop her a few hints for free.

Thick graphene blackout curtains hung down over most of the doorways, pooling on the dusty cobbles like cooled lava. Olivia saw a vertical column of neon icons next to one shop that was sunk into the side of a collapsed water tower. A flashing penis had grabbed her attention, it wasn't much to go on but perhaps someone inside did work on sexual prosthetics. She was a little nervous but also turned on. Even though this illicit expedition was predicated on a flight of fancy, the thought of actually pulling it off was extremely arousing.

The slippery tingling sensation in her crotch gave her the courage to push her way though the intimidating curtains. They closed behind her with a magnetic snap that left her in complete darkness. After a minute or so her eyes adjusted, a thread of light escaping from where the curtains met revealed a second set of curtains behind the first. Olivia pushed through these into an even darker blackness. Her eyes took longer to adjust but eventually she began to discern the outlines of ghostly shapes.

They were human figures reclined in spidery chairs, VR masks covering most of their features, their hands moved intricately in the air, some trailing slender glowing wires that arced upward into the ceiling. The luminous lines met in the center forming a giant glowing spiderweb, it was really quite beautiful. Suddenly an electric blue arrow cast by an unseen laser projector flashed in front of Olivia's feet, then it flashed again several centimeters away. The flashing turned into a pattern that appeared as an animation, it was guiding her through the oblivious crowd.

Cautiously she followed the arrows as they led her deeper and deeper into the underground. There was light up ahead, eventually she was directed to a glass box with curved sides. Inside sat a fat woman sitting at a silver workbench. She had two hands working on something with an additional six translucent appendages assisting from somewhere behind her back. She put down her piece and looked up, her face both sly and curious. Olivia was slightly unnerved by the two additional silver eyes peering out from underneath her blue bangs, they tracked her movements with great interest.

"Our collective was unable to calculate the probability of your arrival. There is a fluctuation. Which is why you've been directed to me. I am Aranha, I run this district." Olivia stepped back as the woman rose suddenly, two clouds of violet mist hissing hotly from under her flabby arms, her body split down both sides and then peeled back and away. A new woman stepped out of the old, she was still overweight but no longer morbidly obese. Olivia could now make out distinct lines running up and down her chest, they matched the headless shell she had left behind, along with her six other arms.

"This is very strange indeed." The woman murmured, the glass walls of her box shimmered and melted away, she walked with surprising poise and grace directly up to Olivia. She glanced back over her shoulder. "You've never seen armor like it before have you?" Olivia shook her head, still in a mild state of shock. "And yet here you are." The woman finished softly, a lilt in her voice that implied cynicism sabotaged by wonder. She walked slowly around Olivia, circling her like a hungry shark.

"No implants, no prosthetics. Oh." She paused behind Olivia who turned around anxiously, not too fond of having this strange creature standing behind her. "Correction, a prosthetic recently removed." She said thoughtfully, then cleared her throat. "Apologies, I didn't mean to pry. It's just that no one ends up here by mistake, and yet I can't fathom what could have possibly inspired the collective to lead you into my lair."

Olivia actually smiled at this. "You could try asking me." She replied somewhat brusquely. Aranha laughed blithely at this remark, it had a musical yet artificial quality as though it were synthesized.

"Low tech is best tech." She quipped in a half whisper, shielding her mouth with one cupped hand as though there were many eager eavesdroppers nearby. "So little girl, why don't you tell me what brings you to Aranha's humble abode." Olivia scowled, she knew she looked young for her age but being mistaken for a child always pissed her off, perhaps this woman was deliberately infantilizing her for amusement? Olivia grinned at the thought, since she was about to blow this bitch's mind.

"I was just wondering if it would be possible to hack a state medical male prosthetic, to make it fully functional. And what that would cost me." She smirked. Her question had the desired effect, Aranha's arrogant countenance had gone slack, her mouth lolled open, a look that was part disbelief, part befuddlement. After several seconds her jaw snapped shut with a faint clopping sound, she inhaled sharply and deeply, apparently having forgotten to breathe. All four eyes blinked in unison several times. Then finally her face resumed its visage of cool superiority.

"The collective can answer your question. For a price." Olivia cocked her head, the way Aranha had said it filled her with suspicion spiked with dread. She was in deep now, this had gone from a playful jaunt to a dead-serious transaction, there was no telling what would happen if she continued. For a moment she considered running, but then she pictured Marcella, naked and stretched out on her bed, legs open, vulva glistening. Aranha was watching Olivia closely, her expression tense. Perhaps she could sense Olivia's precarious mental state.

"All we require is a small cerebral implant, it will utilize less than 1% of your mental potential for thirty days." It was said at normal volume, but then as before she put one hand to her mouth and continued in a whisper. "You've got guts I'll give you that, so I'll offer you a little something for free up front: the implant is like a credit card, it's how you pay for everything in our district, only the percentage and duration changes. It can also be removed." Olivia was not sure what to make of these sidelong addendums but she did like the sound of that last part.

"I agree to pay." Was all she said, folding her arms and grinding her teeth. She'd probably regret it later, but at least for now she was too excited to back down. Aranha took a few steps closer, the loud hissing sound and purple mist enveloped Olivia again, she watched in awe as the woman once more left a headless body behind. This new person who emerged from the translucent husk like a butterfly exiting its cocoon was perfectly proportioned and seemingly naked, except she had no genitalia.

"I'll do the procedure myself." She murmured, as if to an invisible person standing somewhere in the back of the room, closing the final space between them she smiled grimly. Olivia shivered but did not step back. They were close to the same height, Aranha closed her silver eyes, while her organic gray ones stayed open. "I am a physical host for our implants, they can only live inside a human body. You should consider yourself privileged, there are few who have seen me in my original skin."

Olivia nodded, the moment felt pretty momentous, even though she wasn't sure if she was suitably impressed. "The procedure is slightly invasive, it requires a physical interface, but it won't hurt, you may even enjoy it." Her mouth twitched as she said this. Olivia's heart was beating a little faster.

"What kind of physical interface?" She asked meekly. Aranha just pointed silently to her own mouth and then to Olivia's mouth. The meaning was obvious. Olivia sighed and then nodded once more, secretly she was thankful that it wouldn't be the first time she'd kissed another woman. But these thoughts were quickly swept away as Aranha reached up with both hands, lacing them behind Olivia's head, threading them stiffly into her coarse hair.

Their mouths came together awkwardly, Olivia opening hers in surprise, Aranha turning her head to the side while twining her fingers until Olivia could feel them touching her scalp. Aranha was controlling her completely, which made her angry but she was afraid that if she moved the wrong way it would mess up the procedure. A sweet taste filled her mouth, fruity, sugary, her lips went numb and she felt light-headed. This kiss wasn't very erotic, but she was getting aroused anyway.

In a far away corner of her awareness she noted a hot burning sensation at the back of her head, Aranha's fingers were there pressing into her skin. The heat intensified until she couldn't ignore it. She wondered at the fact that Aranha hadn't stuck her tongue into her mouth yet. It was a deep kiss, but the woman only shifted slightly. Olivia decided to follow her example, leaving her tongue where it was and moving as little as possible.

The thing that got under her skin was that this passionless kiss was actually getting her very excited, if only because she had no idea what was happening, and knew it could change at any moment. The burning at the back of her head became a sharp stinging, Aranha's lips finally started to move, they relaxed, then returned, opening Olivia's mouth. But still there was no tongue, which she found strangely frustrating.

Aranha's lips nearly pulled away but then came back. Their mouths weren't just mashed together anymore, she was kissing Olivia properly, they made cute smacking sounds as she pulled back and then planted her lips in a slightly different place. Olivia felt a massive flush of excitement, the kisses were so tender and pointed, each one felt strategically placed. She could also still taste the fruity sweetness in her mouth, her lips tingled pleasantly. "Mmmm." She hummed.

The pain at the back of her skull was gone, Aranha pulled away slowly, her almond shaped eyes closing sleepily. "Sorry, I got a little caught up in the moment." She murmured then licked her lips. As foggy as her mind was Olivia still had most of her wits.

"You tricked me." She said sharply, then "The implant wasn't in your mouth you just wanted to kiss me!" She slurred, then giggled at how stupid her voice sounded.

"Not really." Aranha said, finally snaking her hands out from behind Olivia's head. "The implants live in my hands but my mouth produces an array of powerful drugs that allow your body to accept the device, they also anesthetize and sedate so that you don't feel the pain or overreact." Olivia nodded dully, her head wobbled up and down like a bird with a broken neck. She was mildly disappointed that it made sense. Not that she was attracted to this strange woman, but she had enjoyed the kissing.

"I doubt you'll notice the power we borrow, you're quite bright." It was an odd compliment but Olivia decided to take it. "And now to answer your question." Aranha was already stepping backwards into her second skin, it closed around her with a hissing squelch that made Olivia sick to her stomach. "Yes we can theoretically hack a state prosthesis, but it's only been done on military-grade augmentations. The idea of cracking standard equipment is somewhat humorous."